But that had been before the interminable waste of the Grass War and the long train of young women and men in front of my desk with the trinkets they thought would give them a chance of not becoming food for crows in a field somewhere.

None of us took a wound, none of them. And Eirik's men made it out of the forest, and we made it back to our cave, and King Harald was still dead, still not coming back to save us. The nuthatch still trilled its descending wippling notes in the trees, unconcerned by the arrows. Nothing changed.

And Eirik's men made it out of the forest, and we made it back to our cave, and King Harald was still dead, still not coming back to save us.

The doe's blood melted and burned the earth. The smell of old rot poured into the forest. The ground collapsed, pulling the saplings and ferns down into the underworld, and Sal and her company stepped back. A single segmented leg, infinitely thin and long, crept out from the hole. First one, then another.

Sal stood alone in the field, feeling the absence of her friend's touch. Being open to death was the cost of living free.